Part 5 (2/2)
Moreover, where there are small children and where there is no trusty servant or some kindly relative or friend it seems impossible for the housewife to leave the home. Her husband must work daily for their bread and unless they are willing to turn to the charitable organizations, it is necessary for the housewife to carry on, despite her fatigue. So at the best she gets an hour or two extra rest a day, takes a ”little tonic” from the family doctor and gets along with her pains, her aches, and moods as best she can.
But the sick do not always recover. Fortunately, the average human being grieves a while over death, but the life struggle soon absorbs him, and the bereavement itself becomes a memory. But now and then one meets mothers whose griefs and deprivations seem without end. No religion, no philosophy can bring them back into continuity with their lives. They go about in a sorrowful dream, hugging their affliction, resenting any effort to comfort or console; without interest in the daily task or in those whom they should love. They offer the severest problem in readjustment, in reenergization, for they actively resent being helped. Sometimes one believes their grief is an effort to atone for neglect real or fancied, a self-punishment which is not remitted until full atonement has been made.
Aside from the physical difficulties in the bearing and rearing of children, and in addition to the ordinary mental difficulties, such as judging what discipline to use, there are especial problems of some importance. Men vary in character from the saint to the villain, in ability from the genius to the idiot. The children they once were vary as much. There are children who go through the worst of homes, the worst of environments, the worst of trainings,--and come out pure gold, with characters all the better for the struggle. There are others whom no amount of love, discipline, training, and benefits help; they are despicable from the ordinary viewpoint from the first of life to the last. Some children, adversely situated as to poverty and health, become geniuses, and their reverse is in the poor child whom heredity, early disease, or some freak of nature dooms to feeble-mindedness.
The heart of the mother is in her child; she glories in its progress, and she refuses to see its defects until they glare too brightly to be overlooked. Then she has a heartbreak all the more bitter for her maternal love.
It is the incorrigibly bad child and the mentally deficient child who evoke the severest, most neurasthenic reaction on the part of the housewife. Not only is pride hurt, not only is the expanded self-love injured, but such children are a physical care and burden of such a nature as to outbalance that of three or four normal children.
The bad child, egoistic, undisciplinable, destructive, and quarrelsome, or the child who cannot be taught honesty, or the one who continually runs away, is an unending source of ”nervousness” to his mother. As time goes on and the difficulty is seen to be fundamental, a battle between hostility and love springs up in the mother's breast that plays havoc with her strength and character. The very worst cases of housewife neurosis are seen in such mothers; the most profound interference with mood, emotion, purpose, and energy results.
Similarly, with the mother of the feeble-minded child. At first the child is viewed as a bit slow in walking, talking, in keeping clean, and the mother explains it all away on this ground or that. A previous illness, a fall in which the head was hurt, difficulty with the teething, diet, etc., all receive the blame. Alas! In the course of time the child goes to kindergarten and the terrible report comes back that ”the child cannot learn, is clumsy, etc.”, and the teacher thinks he should be examined. Then either through the examination or through the pressure of repeated observations mother love yields to the truth and feeble-mindedness is recognized.
There are plenty of women who, with this fact established, adjust themselves, make up their minds to it. But others find that it takes all the pleasure out of their lives, become morbid, and do not enjoy their normal children. For with all due respect to eugenics and statistics I am convinced that the most of feeble-mindedness is accidental or incidental, and not a matter of heredity. Once a mother gets imbued with the notion that the condition is hereditary, she falls into agonies of fear for her other children. In my mind there is a thoroughly reprehensible publicity given to half-baked work in heredity, mental hygiene, and the like that does far more harm than good and interferes with the legitimate work.
There is no offhand solution for the case of the incorrigible boy or girl. Of course the largest number sooner or later reform, sometimes overnight, and in a way to remind one of the religious conversions that James speaks of in his ”Varieties of Religious Experiences.” So long as a child has a social streak in his make-up, so long as he at least is responsive to the praise and blame of others and understands that he does wrong, so long may one hope for him. But the child to whom the opinion of others seems of no value, who follows his own egoism without check or control by the accepted standard of conduct, by the moral law, by the praise and blame of those near to him, is almost hopeless. Some day intelligence may keep him out of trouble, but by itself it cannot change his nature.
It is not sufficiently realized that while there has been a rise of feminism there has also been a great change in the status of children, a change that makes their care far more difficult than in the past. They have risen from subordinate figures in the household, schooled in absolute obedience, ”to be seen and not heard,” to the central figures in the household. One of the strangest of revolutions has taken place in America, taken place in almost every household, and without the notice of historians or sociologists. That is because these professional students of humanity have their attention focused on little groups of figures called the leaders, and not nearly enough on that ma.s.s which gives the leaders their direction and power.
The age of the child! His development parallels that of women, in that an individualization has taken place. In the past education and training took notice of the child-group, not of the individual child. But child-culture has taken on new aspects, punishment has been largely superseded, individual study and treatment are the thing. Personality is the aim of education, especial apt.i.tudes are recognized in the various types of schools that have arisen: commercial, industrial, cla.s.sical; yes, and even schools for the feeble-minded.
All this is admirable, and in another century will bring remarkable results. Even to-day some good has come, but this is largely vitiated by other influences.
Aside from the fact that the attention paid the child often increases his self-importance and makes his wishes more capricious, there are factors that tend to rob him of his navete.
These factors are the movies, the newspapers, and the spread of luxurious habits amongst children.
The movies are marvelous agents for the spread of information and misinformation. Because of the natural settings they give to the most absurd and unnatural stories, their essential falsity and unreality is often made the more pernicious. Their possibilities for good are enormous, their actual performance is conspicuously to lower the public taste, to create a habit which discourages earnest reading or intelligent entertainment. For children they act as a stimulant of an unwholesome kind, acquainting them with realistic crime, vice, and vulgarity, giving them a distaste for childlike enjoyment. One sees nowadays altogether too often the satiated child who seeks excitement, the cynical, overwise child filled with the lore of the movies.
In similar fas.h.i.+on the ”comic” cartoons of the newspapers have an extraordinary fascination for children. Every child wants to read the funny page, though the funny page is not for childish reading. The humor is coa.r.s.e, slangy, and distinctly vulgar; very clever frequently and thoroughly enjoyable to those whom it cannot harm.
If the historians of, say, 4500 A.D. were by chance to get hold of a few copies of our newspapers of 1920 they might legitimately conclude that the denizen of this remote period expressed surprise by falling backward out of his shoes, expressed disagreement by striking the other person over the head with a brick or a club; that women were always taller than their mates and usually ”beat them up”; that all husbands, especially if elderly, chased after every young and pretty girl. They might conclude that the language of the ma.s.s of the people was of such remarkable types as this: ”You tell them Casket, I'm Coffin”, or ”the Storm and Strife is coming; beat it!”
No one I think enjoys the comic page more than the present writer,--yet it spreads a demoralizing virus amongst children. Of what use is it to teach children good English when the newspaper deliberately teaches them the cheapest slang? Of what use is it to teach them manners and kindliness when the newspaper constantly spreads boorishness and ”rough house” conduct? Of what use is it to raise taste when this is injured at the very outset of life by giving bad taste a fascinating attraction?
Throughout the community there is a stir and excitement that is reflecting on the children. There are so many desirable luxuries in the world now, so many revealed by movie and symbolized by the automobile, the cabaret, the increasing vulgarity of the theater (the disappearance of the drama and the omnipresent girl and music show), a restless search for pleasure throughout the community even before the War, have not missed the child.
All these things make the lot of the housewife harder in so far as the training of her children is concerned. She is dealing with a more alert, more sophisticated, more sensuous child,--and one who knows his place and power. The press and the theater both have knowledge of this and a recent witty play dealt with the sins of the children, paraphrasing of course the cla.s.sic of a bygone day, ”Sins of the Fathers.” And a wise old gentleman said to his grandson recently, when the lad complained about his mother, ”Of course you are right. Every son has a right to be obeyed by his mother.”
I am by no means a pessimist. Every forward step has its bad side, but nevertheless is a forward step. It is in the nature of things that we shall never reach a millennium, though we may considerably improve the value and dignity of human life. Democracy has a role in the world of great importance,--but the spread of education and opportunity to the ma.s.s may make it more difficult for the best ideals and customs to survive in the avalanche of mediocrity that becomes released by the agencies that profit by appealing to the ma.s.s. So, too, the rise of the woman and child bring us face to face with new problems, which I think are less difficult problems than those they have superseded and replaced, but which are yet of importance.
And a great problem is this: how to individualize the child and keep from spoiling him; how to give him freedom and pleasure, and keep him from sophistication.
CHAPTER VI
POVERTY AND ITS PSYCHICAL RESULTS
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